When Voter-Registration Reform Helps Republicans

By Christopher Shea

Does reducing the barriers to voting invariably help Democrats? A new study turns that conventional wisdom on its head. Political scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison looked at the arrival of so-called election-day registration — a reform typically advocated for by Democrats and opposed by Republicans — in that state, in 1976. (Many states require voters to register before election day, effectively turning voting into a two-stage process.)

Because not all municipalities were affected by the change in Wisconsin that year –242 out of 1,851 cities and towns adopted it — the researchers were able to identify variations in turnout and partisan voting across culturally similar places that were driven by different registration policies.

Over all, the effects on turnout were on the low end of those found by other studies of voter-registration reform. If a Wisconsin county moved from no election-day registration to 100% election-day registration (in fact, no county saw so sweeping a change), turnout would increase only by about 3 percentage points, the data showed.

More surprisingly, the authors calculated that election-day registration cost the Democratic nominee for president, Jimmy Carter, 3 to 6 percentage points in places that saw reform. (President Carter still won the state, though he conceivably might not have had reform been universal in Wisconsin, the authors suggest.)

How to explain that counterintuitive result? Citizens who are lured to vote by election-day registration aren’t representative of non-voters as a whole, the authors suggested. As “almost” voters, they likely have higher incomes and more education (and therefore more likely to be Republican). The effects of other registration reforms, such as “motor-voter” laws, would quite likely be different. Unlike election-day registration, for example, motor-voter laws create rosters of voters, in advance, which are then targeted and mobilized by political parties.

There also might be state-specific factors. Wisconsin has historically been a high-turnout state; results might vary in a low-turnout state. Still, it seems that Republicans need not always fear voter-registration reform — and that Democrats should be careful about what they wish for.

Comments (3 of 3)

This study shows that making the process more convenient can empower all the people, w/o partisan bias. Lets take the next step – Internet voting! That would empower even more Americans. And with more voters thus empowered, more moderate opinions would prevail. From that would follow a more moderate, more pragmatic Congress. Thus, Internet voting would break the partisan gridlock, and get this country moving again!
William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Twitter: wjkno1
Author: Internet Voting Now!